The subject matter disclosed herein relates to systems and methods used to assess the health of high voltage electrical systems.
Alternating current electrical motors are devices capable of converting electrical energy into mechanical energy. Electrical generators are devices that convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The conversion of energy in these devices take place through an electromagnetic coupling of a stator to a rotor. This coupling requires the presence of conductor windings around a stator or a rotor magnetic core. For appropriate function of the aforementioned electrical devices, the windings are insulated. Due to aging, insulation quality deteriorates over time. Unchecked deterioration of the insulators may lead to device failure, particularly in high voltage applications. It is therefore important to monitor insulator health if one wants reliable operation of the electrical device.
Existing solutions for monitoring the health of winding insulation often require the device to be off-line. One such method relies on measuring partial discharge activity throughout winding insulation, and to calculate figures of merit such as Partial Discharge Extinction Voltage (PDEV) and/or Partial Discharge Inception Voltage (PDIV). This approach requires the use of specialized sensors and leads to considerable down time. The available solutions for on-line device monitoring employ a large number of sensors or employ sensors that do not provide high sensitivity or accuracy. This results in monitoring methods that are expensive, rely on subjective strategies, or are based on very large amounts of data.